In novel protest, Congress to jam Bhattacharjee’s fax machines

Kolkata, Dec 11 (IANS) The students’ arm of the Congress - Chhatra Parishad - Thursday decided to jam all the fax numbers of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s office, protesting his alleged inaction after a court termed as illegal all Primary Teachers Training Institutes (PTTI) in the state.”We’ve decided to jam all the fax numbers of the Chief Minister’s Office on Dec 18. We’ll start sending our demand through fax from 10 a.m. and will continue to do that up to 5 p.m., till the office is closed,” Chhatra Parishad state president Sourav Chakraborty told IANS.

He said: “We’ve chosen this unique mode to protest the vexed PTTI issue as the state government played an inactive role in resolving the matter. We’ll do it to bring the matter to Bhattacherjee’s notice.”

“Through fax, we’ll demand immediate resignation of the chief minister as he failed to solve a number of issues like Nandigram, Singur, Lalgarh …and now PTTI.”

He said because of Bhattacharjee’s “indifference” towards the PTTI issue, the future of about 75,000-odd people, comprising 45,000 primary teachers and 30,000 students, is uncertain in West Bengal.

“Since the past two years, he has neither taken any positive step to intervene into the issue nor has he asked the centre to step in,” Chakraborty said.

In a ruling, the Calcutta High Court said all 138 PTTIs in West Bengal are illegal and they have not obtained necessary approvals from the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) had earlier sought the central government’s intervention in the matter.

The state’s principal opposition party Trinamool Congress also demanded a solution, saying both the central and state governments should sit together and resolve the PTTI row.

Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his short stay at Raj Bhavan here last week. She later said the prime minister assured her that he would talk to the HRD ministry about the problem.